How to tame Friender the Mechano Wolf

I think it’s safe to say that Friender the mechano wolf is the first legitimate taming challenge discovered in Legion. We have Treble and Rush, which are found via track hunting, but Friender is something completely new. Shout out to Kyfus who was the first Hunter to discover this one.

When Blizzard first announced mechanical pets they specifically mentioned a mechano strider challenge in Gnomeregan. So far, we haven’t seen that one specifically, but it’s possible that Friender is the end result of that original idea. He should be tameable once the 7.0 prepatch goes live before Legion.

To begin, make sure you can actually tame a mechanical pet. Gnomes and Goblins can do so innately, but other races must obtain a Mecha-Bond Imprint Matrix from their local engineer. Unfortunately, engineers won’t be able to craft this until Legion, so only Gnomes and Goblins will be able to do this in the prepatch.

Secondly, the buttons can only be used by level 100+ players.

Step 1: Head to Gnomeregan

That’s in Dun Morogh for your Hordies out there. Head inside, go down the elevator, then take instance portal. The Engineering Labs is deep into the instance, follow the maps above to get there.

Once you’re in the labs, you’ll see Friender sleeping in the middle of the room. He can’t be tamed yet. Time to do a few puzzles!

One of the button puzzles

Step 2: Button Puzzles

There are three button puzzles that all must be solved to activate Friender. There is a 6-, 7-, and 8-button puzzle on the north, south, and west walls of the labs.

It doesn’t matter which order you do them in.

All the puzzles start in different states every time you reset the instance, so there is no way to provide an exact guide since it will be different every time.

Clicking a button will flip the current state (on or off) of the left and right buttons in addition to the one you clicked.

The goal is to light up all of the buttons.

A trick I learned is to pick the first unlit button, and click the one directly to its right. Keep moving right doing the same thing. If you reach the end of the line of buttons, loop back to the beginning.

It’s simpler than it looks! Once you get inside to try it, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.

I solved the puzzles a half-dozen times now, and on two of my resets I was unable to solve the 8-button puzzle. I think this could be a bug. Simply resetting the instance and trying again gave me a new starting state that I was able to solve.

Step 3: Taming Friender

Once you complete the 3 puzzles, Friender will wake up and start running a circle around the labs. Stay near the edge of the room and you won’t aggro him.

Friender is immune to crowd control, and will pretty much one-shot you if he gets close. The key is to pop your Aspect of the Turtle (the new Deterrence) right before you cast Tame Beast. The channel time for Tame Beast is fast enough that you’ll be fully protected as long as you cast them back to back.

And that’s it! If you’re curious, Friender is a reference from an anime series called Casshan. There is a blue robot dog named Friender in it apparently. I guess Blizzard only has so many blue robot dogs they can pull from, eh? Treble and Rush, the other two mechano wolves discovered so far are references to Mega Man. There is also green and orange mechano wolves in the game files, which I expect to become pets at some point.

Would be amazing if there was some sort of puzzle-solver where you could enter what sequence you see in front of you and it would tell you the steps to take. That 8-button one is nothing short of severely frustrating.

its not only just level 100 requirement, me and my bf tested this. my level 100 hunter with engineering could the buttons but his mage couldn’t. so we tested with his mage learning lvl 1 engineering and found out you either need max/high level engineering or lvl 100 hunter.